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It has been established that children’s ICs are a phenomenon involving imagination and pretend play. These entities fulfil different functions and some researchers suggest they enhance children’s socio-cognitive development. One of the only socio-cognitive domains which has been concentrated on extensively by researchers examining ICs is theory of mind (ToM). ToM is the ability to see things from another’s perspective by being able to infer what the other person is thinking or feeling and

recognise that others may have thoughts and feelings that differ from one’s own. In other words, having a ToM entails being able to impute mental states to oneself and to others (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). This ability to explain others’ behaviour by perspective- taking is an important milestone in the development of mind and social cognition.

Children’s ToM understanding goes through drastic changes from the ages of 3- to 5-years (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001; Wellman & Liu, 2004). However, despite

age-related development in ToM understanding, there are also considerable individual differences (Flynn, 2006). Children’s understanding of ToM has been shown to be closely related to variables including verbal ability (Astington & Baird, 2005), executive function (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004; Carlson, Moses, & Claxton, 2004), mental state talk at home (Hughes, Fujisawa, Ensor, Lecce, & Marfleet, 2006;

Youngblade & Dunn, 1995), peer acceptance (Slaughter, Dennis, Pritchard, 2002), and pretend play (Taylor & Carlson, 1997). ToM is typically measured using false belief paradigms (Wellman et al., 2001); however, recently researchers have begun to incorporate a battery of tasks arguing that children’s developing ToM includes the understanding of multiple concepts (e.g., intentions, emotions, knowledge, and desires), and suggesting the scaling of ToM tasks (Hughes et al., 2000; Wellman & Liu, 2004). By taking into account both the correlates and the concepts that are related to ToM, its assessment has certainly changed since the concept was first examined by Premack and Woodruff (1978).

Of the variables that relate to ToM, pretend play is one that the child has active control over. Both ToM and pretend play are essentially social in nature, and the period of time when children are maximally engaging in play with their ICs coincides directly with ToM development (Taylor, 1999; Wellman & Liu, 2004; Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Rakoczy (2008) asserts that play reflects a collective ‘we’ intentionality which cannot be reduced to individual intentional attitudes, thus its social origin is solidified. It should follow that ToM and proclivity for pretence (an act which is inherently social in origin) should be related because of their common social origins. Evidence for this link comes from findings that high levels of pretend play, and particularly having an IC, are related

to superior ToM skills (Bouldin, 2006; Garner, Curenton & Taylor, 2005; Mitchell & Neal, 2005; Rakoczy, Tomasello, & Striano, 2006; Schwebel, Rosen, & Singer, 1999, Taylor & Carlson, 1997).

Pretend play is thought to relate to ToM not only because these two abilities are social, but also because both pretend play and ToM are ‘meta-representational’ in nature. The concept of meta-representation requires the child to represent their own or another’s representation of a counterfactual state of affairs (Leslie, 1994). For example, if two children are engaged in pretence, one could pick up a banana and put their ear to the fruit to simulate talking on the phone. If the child were to hand the same banana to their partner afterwards, the savvy partner would be expected to take the banana and have a “chat” of their own, thus recognising the counterfactual representation of the banana as a telephone. Both in pretending themselves that the banana is a telephone, and observing a partner playing, children are engaging in the act of meta-representation. They are doing so by possessing insight into the mental state of “pretending.” According to Leslie (1994), this representation is a primitive form of the adult version of pretence conceptualised by children as, “someone is pretending of the banana that [it is a

telephone]” (p. 212). ToM’s meta-representational link with pretend play can be clearly seen when observing false belief paradigms where children must recognise another’s representational false belief.

Other cognitive behavioural theories that do not incorporate the meta-

representational view have been proposed to explain the mechanisms that underlie the capacity for pretend play. These theories incorporate concepts that would influence ToM; however, the meta-representational account provides a broad account of play where other

accounts fail to explain certain types of pretence (Friedman & Leslie, 2007; Rakoczy, 2008; Rakoczy et al., 2006). For example, pretending has been explained by Nichols and Stitch (2000) as a mentalistic concept where a child engages in pretence as a cognitive process. Nichols and Stitch assert that play scenarios are represented in “possible worlds,” so to continue with the banana/phone scenario, in a possible world, the banana would act as a telephone. Children decouple the scenario “pretend” (P) where the banana is a telephone, so that they do not actually believe that the scenario P is true; instead the scenario is placed in their “possible worlds” box. Subsequently, they behave in a way that would be appropriate if the scenario were true, or they behave-as-if it were true (Nichols & Stitch, 2000). However, this cognitive theory fails to account for instances when a child may misinterpret non-pretend behaviours to be pretence (Rakoczy, 2008).

There are still other accounts of the underlying mechanisms creating the capacity for pretend play; however, the meta-representational and possible-worlds paradigms continue to stand at the head of research done on pretend play (Harris, 2000; Rakoczy, 2008). A child’s creation of an IC would take this type of meta-representational play a step further. Being able to practise meta-representation in the absence of a partner entails the child becoming familiar with representing their own play representations as well as their imagined playmate’s representations. Engaging with this playmate as if they have a mind of their own should be even more taxing on the representational imagination.

Taylor and Carlson (1997) were the first to investigate the relation between ICs, pretend play, and ToM. In their study, ToM was assessed using appearance-reality, false belief, and representational change tasks. Experimenters not only used IC interviews to assess children’s imaginative ability, but also incorporated fantasy orientation interviews

and behavioural measures, such as giving the child a choice of a reality-oriented or fantasy-oriented toy. Taylor and Carlson reported that high fantasy groups achieved higher scores on ToM tasks than did low fantasy groups. These authors concluded that ICs are an effective means of improving ToM because having an IC provides the child with greater opportunities to practise representing others’ internal states. This is thought to occur because children with ICs have created an environment where they can practise imagining what others are potentially thinking. Repetition is important to this theory because it has also been shown that children improve upon ToM tasks with practice (Flavell, Flavell, & Green, 1983; Flynn, 2006). However, it seems that the practice needed regarding children’s pretend play must entail the correct form of play, especially for those children who impersonate others, because Taylor and Carlson found that children who impersonate things that are non-human objects (e.g., machines) did not excel like children impersonating those who have minds (e.g., humans). Therefore, the children who engage in pretend play with an IC when they do not have another playmate will allow themselves more opportunity to imagine others’ perspectives and

representations, and thus hone the skills required for passing ToM tasks.

Gleason (2002) further considered the higher order cognitive functions that are enhanced with a child’s possession of an IC, asserting that IC children are more aware of their own thoughts moment to moment and are therefore more attuned to acknowledge others’ perspectives, thus predisposing them to better ToM performance. In addition to being aware of their thoughts, IC children are also thought to create more vivid mental images compared with NIC children (Bouldin, 2006). Their vivid imaginations enable them to better place, or imagine themselves from different people’s points of view, and

the time spent engaged in fantasy gives them first hand knowledge of the imagination itself and its limits (Sharon & Woolley, 2004). Further evidence for IC children’s superior ToM abilities is provided by the research on joint pretend play and its ability to consistently predict higher scores on appearance-reality tasks (Schwebel et al., 1999). Schwebel et al. (1999) argued that not only does engagement in pretence aid developing ToM, but it also may help to expedite this process. Hence, children with ICs may not only have better ToM, but also acquire this understanding faster than NIC children.

When investigating cognitive function, it is often important to examine children who lack these capabilities in order to gain insight into the specific trajectories that development can follow. For example, children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) share a triad of impairments in social interaction, communication, and imagination. Children with ASD have marked deficits in exhibiting imagination or pretend play (Wing & Gould, 1979). In conjunction with the deficits in imagination, Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith (1985) discovered that 75% of children with autism fail to infer others’ false beliefs. This is an ability that is easily within the reach of typically developing 4-year- olds as well as children with Down’s syndrome of equivalent mental age. This inability to pass ToM tests of both changed location and misleading appearance typically continues into ASD individuals’ teenage and adult life, and at mental ages well beyond 4 years (Peterson & Siegal, 2000).

Since ToM and pretend play are closely connected by meta-representation, imagination, and the ability to engage in social thought, it should prove harder for a child with ASD to ascertain that others may have different thoughts and feelings to their own. Where one deficit is seen in atypical development, the other will show up as well. These

deficits of imagination paired with the inability to pass ToM tasks in populations with ASD have been proven to be robust (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985; Repacholi & Slaughter, 2003; Wing & Gould, 1979), and support the notion that early imagination and pretence may facilitate children’s understanding of other minds. As mentioned above, there are many other variables associated with ToM. Little is known about the process that drives the developmental shift toward better ToM understanding, but this process does occur at a time when the child can no longer rely upon reality as an accurate indicator of why behaviour occurs (Flynn, 2006). The ability to look at imagination, and specifically ICs, and be able to partial out some of the other variables in reference to ToM, may highlight the importance of the imagination to a child’s developing higher order cognitive

functioning.